IN ONE OF THE MOST overwhelming votes in history, frefighters voted for strike action. Their demand is simply a fair wage.
Of the 52,000 firefighters and control operators, 83% turned out to vote and 87% voted yes - a pretty clear mandate for General Secretary Andy Gilchrist.
In recent years firefighters pay started lagging behind. A pay formula that was won as a result of the last National Strike in 1977, has ceased to be effective. The formula has firefighters' wages linked to the upper quartile of male manual workers. This was fine when those workers earned above the national average wage, but today that is not the case.
As a consequence, today's firefighter earns an average of €21,000. When all deductions have been taken out a firefighter cannot expect to take home more than £1000 per month.
As a firefighter who left the service 2 years ago, and as a woman who has no children, I was often in the red when it came to my bank balance at the end of each month. On top of this firefighters not only work unsociable hours but also do a 42-hour week, above the national average.
Time and again firefighters are told what a great job they do and how they put their lives at risk. September I Ith their status within society has greatly increased.
Firefighting is not the only job they do. if you are involved in a train crash they will not only be there to put the fire out, but will cut you out of the wreckage. If you are in a car crash they will also be there to cut you out.
They are the only emergency service that can still attend every call, however minor within 4 minutes.
Yet for all of this the government refuses to fund a 40% increase which will put firefighters on £30,000 a year. Instead they argue that this is a laughable claim and that if they pay the firefighters this amount then other public sector workers would be banging on the door asking for the same.
Furthermore, the government have miraculously, at the eleventh hour set up a review of the service, under the chairpersonship of Professor George Bain.
They claim that this review is an indeQuite rightly after pendent one. But in my experience as an FBU official for 15 years, there was never a review that did not lean to the employers demands.
Furthermore, when the goverment say that they are looking at reviewing the fire service, this invariably means cut backs and the worsening of conditions for firefighters and control staff. This one will be no different.
When I worked at Willesden Fire Station, West London, I experienced the death of 2 firefighters whilst in the line of duty.
Surely they are worth €8.50 an hour, which is what the €30,000 will take them to. firms. "Plans for the corporate city will end local democracy and open the way to control by multinationals," says Kenny Bell, secretary of the city's Unison branch and one of the organisers of the day of protest.
New Labour has N
been piling the regional capital to be more responsive to its 'modernisation agenda'. Despite privatising over 50 percent of home care in the last six years, a recent report by the government's Audit Commission complained that the city was slow to embrace the opportunities of partnerships'. When
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Fighting for asylum rights Sarah Parker
Across Europe governboth joint and separate measures to control and prevent the entry into Europe of migrants trying to escape the political and economic consequences of neoliberalism.
Last year New Labour followed up the Terrorism Act 2000, which widened the definition of terrorism to potentially criminalise most forms of political protest or even debate, by rushing through the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 200l, containing a large number of authoritarian measures.
This was part of a worldwide wave of attacks on civil liberties of which the full consequences are yet to be felt. The EU is also drafting a secret agreement with the USA which will have yet more serious implications for civil liberties.
Britain is currently leading Europe-wide efforts to finish demolishing the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and with Sarah Parker
The Ay family, Kurdish from Turkey, are still batit the right to protection for political refugees. The increasing harshness of legislation has already made it almost impossible for refugees to enter Europe legally, hence the increase in peoplesmuggling and trafficking and desperately dangerous journeys which governments are so sanctimonious about.
And an increasing number of asylum seekers will find themselves in a cleft stick between the asylum legislation and the anti-terrorist legislation - either the Home Office will refuse to believe they are in danger politically, so they will be refused as economic migrants, or they risk being refused as being associated with terrorism.
In fact, a top immigration barrister publicly said of the TA 2000 that he thought one of its main functions would be to enable the authorities to short-cut asylum procedures and thus refuse more people more easily.
In Britain there has been worryingly little concern about the government's latest Nationality Home Office requests adjournment of hearing Ahmadi family's hearing on I November, and to work out what to do about the fact that the Ay family now have
strong psychologist's
• has made it almost impossible for refugees to enter Europe legally ••• •• .•• Immigration and Asylum Bill.
With the usual small number of honourable exceptions in the House of Commons, it has been left to members of the House of Lords to inflict temporary rejection of some of the clauses.
The government has even felt bold enough to add on new clauses at the Third Reading stage, which will not even be debated. The Bill includes an explicit power not having communicated her whereabouts to the Home Office's satisfaction a couple of times.)
This time the family were to remove British citizenship from political refugees, and to detain them indefinitely, and provisions to remove asylum-seekers from Britain to "safe third countries" without any right of appeal here.
The 'safe list is to include the 10 EU candidate countries, so this rule will be particularly harsh for Roma people from Slovakia or the Czech Republic.
It is well-known to the government that these countries are not necessarily safe at all, either because the countries are not safe in themselves, or because the authorities there remove people onwards to dangerous places such as Turkey or Afghanistan.
Here we see the "war on terrorism" merging with the war on asylum seekers both at the legislative level and in the media and as asylum seekers are stripped of more and more rights while their stereotype is conflated with that of *Muslim-Middle Easterner-terrorist".
Where has • the opposition been? The opposition is there, if often not very visible, and does A coach-load of protesting "aliens" arrive outside the actually have some success, as witnessed by David Blunkett's recent admission that the government has missed its removal targets so far this year, with an annual removal rate of about 12,000 people per year as opposed to the planned 30,000.
Asylum seekers continue to resist the goverment's attempts to remove them, often fighting their own campaigns, on their own or with relatives, friends from school or the community; sometimes persuading pilots not to take them, or refusing to board planes and later winning leave to remain.
Many lawyers and advice workers struggle to defend their clients in increasingly difficult circumstances: the workload is overwhelming and getting worse as the government continually makes the rules more restrictive, speeds up processing of cases, and does not allow a reasonable level of Sangatte refugee camp - to the bemusement of gendarmes fees so that many practitioners leave the field, either because they cannot earn a living or cannot bear the stress.
The Refugee Council has continued to lobby against the government's savage proposals, and they have some high profile allies such as Bill Morris (whose recent excellent statement can be read on the National Coalition of AntiDeportation Campaigns website) and the British Medical Association. Some individual journalists try to cover the issue fairly.
Numerous campaigns also continue to do their best to support asylum seekers and raise aware ness of the issue. Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers and National Coalition of AntiDeportation Campaigns are continuing to build support within the trade union movement, which is very important.
Some activists feel that there is